We’re delighted to be able to offer our UK Hubdubbers their very own UK Edition of Hubdub. Now Hubdubbers based in the UK can now see news stories that other UK users are predicting on, simply by selecting the UK Edition at the top right of the home page.

Interestingly, the US site’s most popular stories today are all around the Presidential Inauguration and Obama’s cabinent appointments, while the UK site’s top listings are X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and Everton v Middlesborough. What does this say about the UK, I wonder? 

Here is the press release that we issued today in the UK:

Edinburgh, 10 November 2008: News junkies in the UK can now get an additional fix, by predicting the outcome of news stories – engaging in news stories instead of just reading them.

Users of Hubdub, which launches in the UK today, use a pot of virtual money to place bets on the outcome of any of over 2000 running news stories, covering the likes of politics, sport, business and entertainment.

Since launching earlier this year in the US, Edinburgh-based Hubdub has garnered a substantial and loyal following, with over 200,000 unique visitors per month, 800,000 predictions to date and over 2 million Hubdub dollars staked every day. Some users are spending several hours a day on the site, with many of them confessing to a definite Hubdub “addiction” on the site’s forum.

The fact that it’s Hubdub dollars at stake is apparently irrelevant – Hubdub users are so competitive that the most important thing is that they prove they were right to the rest of the vibrant community. How much is won or lost depends on not only how the news story turns out, but how others have predicted the outcome. Groups of friends can set up their own, dedicated leaderboard to show who has predicted most accurately.

Globally, prediction markets, the mechanism behind Hubdub, are becoming increasingly popular. In the US, the Presidential election sent the numbers of users soaring. They have proven to be more accurate than polls, and because they respond in near real-time to developing stories, more agile too. Indeed, Hubdub successfully predicted the final voting results of the US election where the majority of polls and pundits failed.

Lesley Eccles, one of the founders of Hubdub, commented: “It’s great to be launching in the UK, despite the recession. People are going to be looking for free entertainment and will turn to the web to find it. Hubdub is free, exciting and keeps you informed. In addition, news sites are looking to engage and interact further with their readers and Hubdub gives them a fantastic means to do so.”

Having secured partnerships with leading media news sites including Reuters and The Independent, Hubdub is taking prediction markets more mainstream and making them easier for casual browsers to appreciate. Sitting beside high quality news content, Hubdub provides news sites with additional ways to engage their readers, keeping them online longer and returning on a regular basis.

Current UK Markets include:
• Where will Russell Brand next get a full-time job?
• When will the next breach of confidential data occur?
• Who will win Strictly Come Dancing?
• All the games, goals and scorers in the English and Scottish football season

Popularity: 5% [?]

Tags: hubdub, Press coverage, UK

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.